Someone Needs To Pitch A Nutty

The A’s just completed another dreadful weekend’s work, and the season is drifting well into NGAD (Nobody Gives A Damn) Territory. They are again bland, dull, injured and inert, which was okay enough when the revenue sharing checks were as big as Uruguay.

Not this year, though, and not in this economy. people are actively seeking reasons to scrimp on entertainment, and the A’s are extraordinarily scrimpable these days.

It is exactly the time for a spread-turning, profane, public howler to be thrown by someone — a player, a manager, a general manager, an owner. Anybody.

But the A’s have nobody who seems to want to bother with even that gesture of frustration. The players are too young, or too old, or too hurt, or too not good enough to pitch a fit for fear of being laughed at by the other non-achievers.

The manager, Bob Geren, doesn’t have it in him and never will. He talks of the players too often as though he were a soccer mom, seeking out the laughably positive whole handing out juice boxes and fruit Roll-Ups. He’s been on the job too long to be convincing at it anyway, so he can’t really change his M.O. now and be taken seriously.

The general manager, Billy Beane, is trying to tamp down his reputation as a top-class meddler (and we’re sure the “Moneyball” movie will show that side of him in all its glory), and in any event had a large hand in constructing this vanilla pudding of a team. What’s he going to do, turn over his kitchen table?

The front man, Lew Wolff, is running silent these days, having hideously misplayed his hand on relocation to the point where he looks more and more like a carpetbagger. Whoever handles his publicity has done a miserable job coaching him, or he is a dreadful pupil. Either way, he’s too vulnerable and unconvincing to throw the fit.

That really leaves only one man — John Fisher, the man with the skin in the game. And he is around only slightly more often than Chris Cohan is around the Warriors. He could go into the room and say, “I pay you hyenas, and I’ve pretty much had it with the lot of you. I don’t know how you do it, but you will either play better or I will find places to put you that are worse than this. I haven’t asked Billy what he thinks of this because I’m only concerned with what I think of this, and I think my money is being badly wasted. This displeases me. It will now begin to displease you, or I will start to displease you, with malice aforethought.”

But Fisher won’t do it either. He’s in it for the real estate too, and he’s not a fit-pitcher by nature. Plus, not showing up very often limits one’s ability to be convincing to the players.

So no fit it is, then. The A’s will muddle along, dry and gray and sooty as ever, and seeming comfort in sub-mediocrity will remain the order of the day. Now there’s a marketing angle they never thought of.